The electromagnetic spectrum used to convey radio communications is a precious commodity. Communication systems seek to use this spectrum as efficiently as possible to maximize the capacity or quantity of information, which can be conveyed using the spectrum.
Various multiple access techniques have been developed to transfer information among a number of users, all while efficiently using spectrum. Time division multiple access (TDMA) techniques assign different users to different time slots. Capacity is hard limited by the number of time slots available. To prevent intolerable interference, the portion of the spectrum used in one radio coverage area or cell has conventionally been unusable in adjacent cells. Thus, only a fraction, typically less than one-third, of the entire spectrum available for conveying communications has been conventionally usable in any one location. In other words, conventional TDMA systems employ a frequency reuse pattern of at least three, indicating an inefficient use of spectrum.
Conventional direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) code division multiple access (CDMA) techniques theoretically use the spectrum more efficiently than TDMA techniques. However, in practice conventional DSSS-CDMA techniques typically fail to provide results significantly better than TDMA. DSSS-CDMA techniques assign different users to different codes. The different codes have conventionally been selected because of orthogonality or low cross correlation properties with the codes of other users. These properties minimize interference. All communications are broadcast using the same spectrum, so the frequency reuse pattern equals one. While the commonly used spectrum conveys a composite of communications for all users, each individual user's communications are extracted from the composite by correlating a received signal against the individual user's assigned code.
Capacity in conventional DSSS-CDMA systems is interference limited. In other words, more and more codes can be assigned so that the given amount of spectrum can service more and more users until interference reaches a level where only a minimally acceptable quality of service results. In practice, most conventional DSSS-CDMA systems can assign far fewer codes than appear theoretically possible due to a near-far effect and multipath. The near-far effect results when signals from different users are received with greatly differing field strengths, but this detrimental effect may be ameliorated somewhat by power control.
Multipath results when the transmitted signal takes multiple paths to the receiver due to being reflected from and deflected around obstacles in the environment. As the signal propagates over the multiple paths, different propagation delays are experienced. Thus, a signal transmitted at a precise instant in time is received spread over an interval, causing the signal to interfere with itself. In conventional DSSS-CDMA communication systems, multipath tends to destroy the orthogonality of spreading codes, resulting in dramatically increased interference.